Frank Nowlan’s; This Sporting Life is the latest suite of paintings takes a broad look at the subject of sport. This is significant. In 1964, injured while playing rugby league, Nowlan began privately painting images of football. He was then encouraged to continue painting by an art teacher and kept this secret from his team mates. He later set painting aside to pursue history teaching. Having retired from that vocation, Nowlan’s current approach to sport is willfully diverse. He chooses subjects of interest and sets up painting challenges – how to capture the mass of a crowd looking over a velodrome or how to alter perspective to reveal more of the ground where the action takes place. Then the paintings start to populate: Bradman as the backyard cricketer, a boxer known as The Torpedo. Australia’s first rugby side.